The Other Way Around
by WriteBravely
Summary: 'You knew what they saw. Wide eyes, tense expression, few words. You were the kid without a home, the puppy who needed rescuing, the frightened deer in the proverbial headlights.' One Shot.
_**The Other Way Around**_

You knew what they saw. Wide eyes, tense expression, few words. You were the kid without a home, the puppy who needed rescuing, the frightened deer in the proverbial headlights.

 _But you were there to save them. Not the other way around._

 _At age five._ Glasses crashing, raised voices, a sea of broken glittering glass ready to pierce the soles of tiny feet who run desperately in the opposite direction of safety.

You know, even then, that the sight of your boyish face is enough to divert attention. It is enough for the anger to be directed at you, enough time for her to selfishly escape. And you know as you take your beating, that you are the protector. Her name is Judas but you protect her faithfully all the same.

 _At ten._ Sitting on the back porch with an eight year old kid who is reading aloud to you. The others relieved you have company; the adults smiling in your direction, the kid believing that for once, he is the entertainer, not the one the others scurry around to entertain. But you know.

You know the kid is sandwiched between athletic honour and movie star charm. He lives in a fictional manuscript written in a language which no one grasps fluently, but he pours his heart out to you- he shares his dreams. He takes your silence as sadness and he tries to fill the gaps between a broken family. Your family is broken sure; but you are never light on friends. You know what he thinks ' _Poor kid doesn't have a decent family'._ But all the while you think, ' _Poor kid. He doesn't have any friends.'_

 _At thirteen._ You are smoking at the bus shelter, a group of guys standing nearby. The rain is uncommitted but threatening; the cold seeping in through damp frayed jeans. And then she passes in her new red dress, eyes ringed with makeup, hair curled rigidly. The dress is tight- too tight- but you can see she's just a kid, maybe the same age as you, with barely enough assets to fill it out. The guys whistle and jeer as she passes and though she cusses them out, you can see her hands are shaking as she readjusts her handbag. Then you hear the guys terrible plan.

When they leave the bus stand for a direction that will change that girl's life forever, you follow. And though you're not scared of a beating, you think about the shame and the embarrassment that a girl must feel when she is grabbed from behind and wrestled to the floor. You smash a car window. A real fancy one with a hostile alarm that reverberates up and down the street. The boys scatter like beetles under a freshly turned stone. The girl escapes with her modesty intact.

 _At fourteen._ You know he's a car crash waiting to happen. He is full of anger, full of hate, but he likes your company. So you humour him. You listen to his bull sessions when you know half of it is make believe. You let him push around a few jerks at school that he thinks are bothering you. You allow yourself to be dragged round town, from bars to rodeos and even into his Pop's house one time. And when you finally meet his old man, you suddenly get why the tow headed kid with a chip on his shoulder feels like he has to save somebody. And it kinda scares you that anybody would depend on you that much.

 _Fifteen_. If you shut your eyes, you can still smell the expensive aftershave and hear the rustling of his gold chain. And you admit it, they fucking scare you. But they only take it so far because you won't back down.

' _Say 'Greaser's suck'_ , yells one of them.

 _'No, say I fuck my mother,"_ says the one with the rings.

 _"You fuck your mother."_

It's the only sentence you say to them so it's the only one they remember when they kick the living shit out of you. All the while they bellow at you to _'take it back'_ but you don't, you won't, you make your peace with the fact that you are probably about to be kicked to death one block from your own house. Maybe that's why you're such a wreck when you're found. Maybe that's why you're crying. Because you had been almost at one with your departure until consciousness had snatched that possibility right out of your cold dead hands.

 _Sixteen_. You know the right thing to do. You know that those kids have to be saved and that is all there is to it. There is a risk that one of your friends will follow you but you never believe that both of them will. You tell one to watch after the other; the car crash might become a train wreck without you. You know your time is up.

There is guilt from everybody. Like you knew there'd be. And you wish to God they'd stop feeling like they left the gate open and let you loose on a busy street. Nobody made you run into the moving traffic.

There were moments of rebellious reluctance but in the end you left serenely, melting softly into a canvas painting of a pink and orange sunset like crayon on a hot radiator.

You knew what they saw. Wide eyes, tense expression, few words. You were the kid without a home, the puppy who needed rescuing, the frightened deer in the proverbial headlights.

 _But you were there to save them. Not the other way around._

XxX


End file.
